


everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it

by lvdym



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lvdym/pseuds/lvdym
Summary: A series of fragments of Didyme's life and death.
Kudos: 2





	everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've written anything, and I've had this tucked away for quite a while. It's rusty, and I feel I could have written some parts of it better, but it's here.

Didyme lives a life of pretense. She knows this. She knows a lot of things. Everything is a delicate balance. She knows this also. Didyme smiles. Didyme pretends that Tantalos’ story isn’t the one she understands the most. Didyme acts like she doesn’t understand longing. Didyme affects as though she doesn’t know what it’s like to have the thing you want just out of your reach. 

She settles for summer silks, since she can’t have the sun. 

She settles for adoration, since she can’t have true love. 

She settles for attention, since she can’t have worth. 

Didyme wonders if she got too used to settling. 

It felt like a slow death; being so needed and so useless. 

Like recognises like, and when she sees Aro she sees herself mirrored back at her, she sees two siblings who grasp at straws and manipulate for their desires. Aro knows they’re not really that different; Didyme doesn’t need his gift to figure that out for herself. 

Aro has manipulation perfected to an art, Didyme stumbles into it; she has not found any better way to keep people close, to stop them from leaving her.

Didyme smiles at him, sugary. “Promise me?” She asks, mellifluous, oozing. “Promise me you won’t look? It feels like cheating, like you don’t trust just … us. Me. Like you don’t trust me.”   
Marcus agrees.   
Didyme smiles wider.   
She knows their bond is not that of mates, but she does not care - not when he looks at her like she is important, like she is somebody worth his love. Not when it feels like taking something back from the man who already has so much. 

—————————————————————

Didyme knows she is a game piece. It’s as obvious to her as there being a sun in the sky - sometimes it is hidden better than others, but it always comes back to that. She lets herself be manipulated; at least she has a purpose then. She just smiles, and obeys, and weaves everybody together with her sunlight. They learn to associate happiness with the Volturi, and not with her. That makes her stomach twist. They were happy because of her. It made her want to scream: you owe me, you love me, I’m important, I’m important too, it isn’t just him!

—————————————————————

Marcus is her victory. She knows Aro can see that every time he touches her. She knows he doesn’t like it. She knows he sees an opportunity in there and that’s why he doesn’t interfere. That pales the win; does it count if it’s only because your opponent doesn’t care enough to make a countermove? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care about definitions. She only cares that Marcus is hers, and he makes her feel important. It was all she’d ever wanted. Didyme tries to convince herself that that counts for something. 

Didyme tries to convince herself that anything she’s ever managed to hold on to counts. It feels childish but she does not let that stop her. 

It’s an abrasive thought to a mind so cloaked in gentleness as a pretense - that Marcus is as disposable to Aro as he is to Didyme, that is, painfully so. It is not a thought she relishes having, and it is not a thought she knows where to put. Therefore, she puts it nowhere. She just lets it sit, and tries not to think around it. She knows Aro has seen it. It feels too late to hide it. Too late to forget.

She tries her best to forget how disposable people are to Aro, really. She tries to cloak herself in safety of blood ties and family, but the thought is always hidden in the shadows, somewhere just a little out of reach. She tries to tell herself she is different, that she is special, that because they share blood they share something more. I am his sister, her mind says, I am the most important. 

Aro does not pass comment. 

—————————————————————

Once upon a time, a brother gifted his sister a crown. It is mottled gold, and bejewelled, hammered into shape by talented, tricky fingers. It is also a mockery. She knows this, Marcus does not. He lifts the jewellery onto her head, his hands and expression full of reverence and worship. Bitterness coats itself onto her tongue as he tells her how much it suits her. The first chance she gets, she throws it into the fire, crackling and orange and yellow and beautiful and deadly. She watches it melt. She smiles. 

—————————————————————

Didyme knows she is playing a game with Aro. She does not always understand the rules, nor the purpose, but she knows it exists. She is not always sure if Aro is playing the same game as her, or even if he knows he’s playing a game at all. (Didyme knew, really, that everything about Aro was a game. She sometimes just tricks herself into believing that he cares about her enough that he will be honest. The siblings both know that Aro does not value honesty. Aro knows he does not value her half as much as she’d like him to.)

—————————————————————

Didyme finds a lump of once-molten metal on her desk. She crumbles it to dust in her hands, lets it fall to the floor. She does not mention it to her brother, and he does not mention it to her. Didyme knows how victory looks on Aro’s face. She does not doubt. She swallows her feelings down; not acknowledging his triumph feels like the closest to her own laurel as she will get, some days. 

—————————————————————

Aro tries to justify it to himself. Didyme knows his character, she knows who he is - she must know what the outcome of these moves would be. She must know, he tells himself, that her machinations will not earn her any reward from him. He tells himself she knows what’s coming, as if she’s an oracle. He does not think too much about her surprise. He tries not to think too much about Pyrrhus. 

—————————————————————

Aro watches the newly acquired twins. He watches their sibling bond. He imagines watching them with Didyme. He imagines being them with Didyme. Sometimes, he thinks that his old age is infecting him with more sentiment than he’d like, but when he catches his reflection and sees a cheekbone, a wisp of hair, the shape of an earlobe, when he sees the physicality of him and his sister, linked through time, through death and undeath alike. 

Aro pretends it was the only way. Aro pretends it was the right decision to make. Aro pretends, and pretends, and pretends. When he is alone, and when the darkness falls over him, he allows himself a little part of himself: he regrets. It is not enough. It has to be.


End file.
